Monday, April 28, 2014

#318 session: good stuff

It's been another good week. I had a particularly 'good eye day' on Sunday.

It's often said by vision therapists that it's a good idea to do vision therapy for about six days a week with a resting day. I wonder if it's a good idea to have a resting day to allow for the eye to recover from the stimulation from the exercise. I normally do vision therapy every day, without exception. When I skip a day of VT as a result of being busy I feel guilty and lazy. But I'm starting to think that taking a day off may actually be beneficial to making progress.

I spent the night at a friend's house on Friday *cough* and spent the next day recovering and doing other things. So I skipped VT. I also did some intermittent fasting and protein cycling on Saturday through Sunday. I ate a small meal at 4pm on Saturday and only ate small snacks with no protein content for the next 24 hours. By the end of the 24 hours I begin to feel a little dizzy. Intermittent fasting and protein cycling is shown to trigger autophagy--it helps trigger the body to clean up unrecycled proteins in the cell. There are a lot of health benefits from this, which is why I do it.

Sunday I noticed good changes. In my experience, I think giving the body stress and different experiences helps with learning and changes in the brain. My fasting, sleep deprivation, physical exertion, break from VT I think made a difference. The experience of my vision was more intense, and I could tell that I was suppressing less with antisuppression Solitaire.

There was a conversation a while back in our DIY Vision Therapy group about yoga. Someone mentioned that she noticed a connection with the quality of her vision on days when she did yoga. She wanted to know whether anyone else had a similar experience. Michael Lievens said that there's a scientific explanation for why this would be the case: yoga activates the body's parasympathetic nervous system, which can help with a whole slew of different body functions.

I think this is probably true of meditation as well. I don't know of any hard evidence that 10-15 minutes of meditation would improve vision therapy results, but I suspect that it would. There is building evidence that meditation is really, really good for one's mental health, and by extension, health in general. It's been shown to increase brain mass and improve learning. I've recently incorporated ten minutes of meditation in the morning regimen and can tell a very significant improvement in the quality of life that it engenders. I know that it's only going to get better as I get better at meditation. I'm going to stick with it. It doesn't make sense to not meditate.